The Senate’s top two Republicans announced their opposition to the New START nuclear treaty with Russia this weekend, putting into question the fate of President Obama’s top national security priority for the close of his first term.
Despite their opposition the treaty appears to be on a path to approval.
The treaty calls for the resumption of nuclear controls that until now have had bipartisan support.
Minority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Jon Kyl of Arizona took to the Sunday chat shows, arguing that Democrats were trying to push the treaty through too hastily.
“Rushing it right before Christmas, it strikes me as trying to jam us,” said McConnell on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Some Senate Republicans have signaled that they may vote for the treaty and the White House has been working furiously to win over the nine Republicans needed to ratify the agreement, but the NY Times notes that a “sour mood” has spread through Capitol Hill’s Republican ranks after the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” on Saturday. One GOP Senator whom Democrats had hoped would support the treaty, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that the lame duck session had been “poisoned” and that advocates of the treaty should “start over and do it in the next Congress.”
The Senator is full of crap. The bottom line is simple and he knows it: The prospect of President Obama achieving another victory in the lame-duck session is not exactly on the top of the GOP Christmas list.
The conservatives are whining that about hastiness? We’ve had eight months, 17 committee hearings and over a thousand questions asked about this treaty –a treaty that’s only 17 pages long. Seventeen pages that have been on both McConnell and Kyle’s desks for most of 2010, and now they’re arguing that Democrats were trying to push the treaty through too hastily.
They haven’t read it? If they haven’t read it yet, maybe they need to be fired. They aren’t doing even the most basic functions of their jobs.
The only thing they have against this treaty is that it will be another victory for Obama. There is no valid reason to oppose this treaty other than to try and make Obama look ineffectual.
If you doubted that Republicans could be so craven as to put their own political interests above national security, there’s your proof.
Who would’ve thought that the party whose ideology is supposedly rooted in national security is now holding our nuclear security hostage solely to weaken or embarrass the president? Public-spirited Republicans should demand that the treaty move forward as planned.
The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) is a consensus document. Obama went to great lengths to win the support of the military, the State Department and a broad range of Republicans and Democrats.
Anyone who thinks there’s something wrong with this treaty needs to take it up with people who know far more than you and certainly who know far more than elected officials whose best skill is playing politics.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice supports the treaty. So do other prominent Republicans including George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, James Baker and Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee.
Every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff strongly backs it. The chairman, Admiral Mike Mullen, has said, “I believe — and the rest of the military leadership in this country believes — that this treaty is essential to our future security.”
You oppose the treaty? Ask those experts why they support it. Then ask yourself why their word isn’t good enough for you.
The treaty would require that Russia and the United States cut back on nuclear arsenals and would allow the United States to resume inspecting Russia’s nuclear facilities, a right that lapsed last December for the first time since the Cold War. Does anyone really want Russia shuffling its nuclear weapons around without inspections? Even a year’s gap has put us in greater danger of materials falling into the wrong hands.
The intrusion of partisan politics into national security is a break with tradition. The opposition party in Congress, whether Democrat or Republican, has long set politics aside so that the country could present a united front to other nations. Lacking trust, we will have fewer allies and partners. Does anyone really think we can go it alone in today’s world?
Obama went to extraordinary lengths to iron out areas of disagreement with Kyl, knowing two-thirds of senators must approve the treaty. The president had no fewer than 29 meetings, phone calls or exchanges with the Arizona senator and his staff, White House documents show. The sticking point seemed to be Kyl’s sense that the United States needs to go to greater lengths to modernize its nuclear arsenal (at the expense of the deficit). So the president offered to add $80 billion to the budget for that purpose.
So how did Kyl respond? He disrespectfully blindsided the president last month, timing the announcement of his opposition to embarrass Obama just before he left for Portugal for a NATO summit.
Kyl is taking his marching orders from Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who openly proclaims that Republicans’ top priority for the next two years is to defeat Obama.
If this isn’t a clear demonstration of putting the quest for party power ahead of the good of the country, what is?
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